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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

10 retail and ecommerce stores integrating offline with online

From the experiential (read as ‘gimmicky’) to the practical (read as ‘will become standard practice’) there are many ways that retailers can integrate their offline stores on the high street with their online ecommerce businesses.

There’s lots of information on the blog already about digital technology in retail and a lot of it really should be thought of as the norm by now.

Unfortunately that’s not necessarily true. In a perfectly digitally integrated world the lack of services like Wi-Fi, contactless payment and click & collect would be the exception to the rule.

However there are still many trailblazers out there, not just offering the digital basics, but going above and beyond the duty of its bricks and mortar stores and offering a new world of interactivity and online integration.

Sure some of them will fail. Sure some of them you’ll barely hear about outside of a few speculative/curious articles like this (“huh, remember a few years ago when Google developed a self-driving car? What happened to that?”)

Some won’t though. Some will go on to become exactly what’s expected from every consumer who visits your high street store.

Wahaca

The London based Mexican restaurant chain has teamed up with Flypay to drive mobile payments in its multiple locations.

There’s a little QR code on every table linked to a unique NFC tag underneath which you scan with your smartphone.

Your itemised bill appears on screen. You can check it for accuracy and split the bill if required.

Using the service requires you to download the app and if the bill needs to be split, then everyone in your party would have to download the app too.